Tamil Nadu toll zooms past 1,000-mark with 68 deaths on Saturday

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu’s Covid-19 death toll breached the four-digit mark to touch 1,025 with 68 fatalities reported on Saturday. The fatality rate has gone to 1.3% from 0.9% a fortnight ago. The state added 3,713 fresh cases, 1,939 cases in Chennai, taking the total to 78,335. However, the active cases numbered 33,213, including 19,877 in Chennai.
TN is the fourth state, after Maharashtra (7,273 deaths), Delhi (2,558) and Gujarat (1,790), to have more than 1,000 fatalities.Health minister C Vijayabaskar said TN’s fatality rate is much lower than Maharashtra’s 4.5%, Delhi’s 3.1% and Gujarat’s 5.8%. TN’s fatality rate could increase to 1.63% if it includes more than 200 Covid-19 deaths recorded by the Greater Chennai Corporation but left out of the state’s count.
The increase in death rate in Tamil Nadu is because more people with the comorbid conditions and people above the age of 60 are getting infected, the health minister said. “Some patients seek treatment six or seven days after the onset of symptoms. Ailments such as heart and kidney diseases, lung disorders along with diabetes and hypertension hamper treatment outcomes,” he said.
For instance, on Saturday’s list three men — aged 65, 42 and 50 years – were declared “brought dead” by doctors at the Government Royapettah Hospital on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. At least 14 people died within a day of admission across both government and private hospitals. Eight out of 68 people whose deaths were reported on Saturday did not have comorbidity. “More than 80% of people who died had comorbidities. In many cases, people were in palliative care. They died with Covid, not because of it,” Vijayabaskar said.
The state offers free treatment to all patients in government hospitals. “The treatment protocol has some expensive medicines such as remdesivir (antiviral) and tocilizumab (immune modulator). These two drugs have saved many lives. We do door-to-door screening for early diagnosis and treatment,” he said.
Infectious diseases expert Dr V Ramasubramanian, who is a member of the state expert committee said, the death rate will increase with the number of cases. The state reported 831 deaths in June, compared to one in March, 26 in April, and 167 in May. “It has happened across the globe. The death rate will stabilise, when the viral load decreases,” he said. Chennai has reported 776 deaths so far. With the increase in incidence, other districts have also started reporting more deaths. On Saturday, 46 deaths were from Chennai, while seven each were in Madurai and Chengalpet, which have seen a rapid increase in the number of cases. There were three deaths in Tiruvallur and one each in Villupuram, Erode, Virudhunagar, Dindigul and Sivagangai districts.
Barring Virudhunagar, all districts recorded fresh cases. Five of them reported a three-digit rise. Chennai’s neighbours Chengalpet and Tiruvallur reported 248 and 146 cases respectively. Kancheepuram was two short of 100. Madurai logged 218 cases, Vellore had 118 and Tiruvannamalai registered 127 cases. Ramanathapuram and Ranipet recorded 93 and 96 cases respectively.
Of the fresh cases, 81 are returnees from other states and countries. Eight of them were passengers from abroad -- two each from Saudi Arabia and Singapore and one each from Malaysia, the Maldives, Qatar and Ukraine. Among domestic passengers who came by flight, road and rail, there were 40 from Karnataka, 11 from Kerala, eight from Telangana and five from Maharashtra. Others were from Gujarat, Delhi, UP, MP, Uttarakhand, WB, Odisha, J&K, Bihar and Puducherry.